How to troubleshoot email problems on the new iPad

More often than not, email just simply “works” on your iPad. You input your account information when you setup the iPad and email is received flawlessly. Occasionally, however, problems do arise and need to be fixed.

Sometimes, it is an issue with the email server, sometimes it is a connectivity issue and sometimes you are just missing a key piece of information in the account setup.

Usually, the solution is simple like a wrong password or switch. We will try to walk you through potential problems and their fixes.

The iPad can’t get your mail

Sometimes, you will start up the Mail app and receive an error message that your mail could not be retrieved. If this happens to you, the first thing to do is to make sure you are connected in some way to the internet.

Look on your home screen for the WiFi logo and/or the 3G/4G indicator or LTE indicator, depending on what type of connection you're using. If you do not see either of these then:

Go to your Settings app

Touch Wi-Fi (for Wi-Fi only iPads) and make sure that Wi-Fi is ON

Then, make sure that there is a check mark next to an available Wi-Fi network.

If there is no checkmark, touch an available Wi-Fi network and “join” the network.

Input a passcode if prompted.

On 4G iPads, touch Settings and then Cellular Data

Touch View Account and make sure that your login information is correct

If you are still having trouble getting email or getting an error message, it is time to go to the actual email settings for the account in question.

Touch the Settings icon

Touch the Mail, Contacts and Calendars tab

Touch the specific email account that is giving you trouble.

Touch the Account tab on the next screen.

Verify that the Email and Password fields are correct. It is sometimes easiest to simply retype them and see if in the verification process this fixes the problem.

When you re-input your Email and Password, you should either see the word “Verifying” at the top and then, hopefully, see some checkmarks saying that the account is working. If you get another error message or if the screen seems to hang on “Verifying” you will need to perform the additional steps.

Go to the Mail, Contacts, Calendar tab as you did above.

Touch the Account that is giving you trouble.

Make sure that your account is listed as ON if it is a POP 3 account (like Comcast)

Make sure that Mail is turned on in IMAP accounts (like Google.)

If you still can’t get mail – try to Delete the Account and then re-set up

If the account is a Google or other IMAP account, all your messages are saved on the server and they will be reloaded when the account is set up.

After re-setting up the account, make sure that you see the “Verified” check marks during set up and you should be fine.

The iPad can’t send your mail

Sometimes, your iPad will receive mail fine, but it won’t send mail. This is a different kind of problem that involves the SMTP – or outgoing Mail server. To try to fix this issue, do the following:

Touch the Mail, Contacts, Calendars tab as you did above.

Touch the Account that is having trouble sending mail.

Touch the tab that says SMTP under Outgoing Mail Server.

Make sure that the primary mail server associated with the email account in question is turned On

If it is turned Off, touch the tab that says Off and turn the switch to On.

If there are other mail servers listed, you can always try to turn one of them On and retry sending your mail. Usually, if mail is unsuccessful in sending from one server, it tries the other listed servers.

If the serer is On and you still have trouble, touch the Primary Server listed and see if in the greyed out field you can see that there is a Host Name, User Name and Password listed. We will show you how to adjust these in the next section.

If you have verified that your account is set up and your SMTP server is On and you still can’t send mail – then we need to dive into the Advanced settings to see if there are any more adjustments to be made.

Touch the Account from the Mail, Contacts, Calendars tab as you did earlier.

Touch the Account tab and then touch the Advanced tab under the SMTP tab.

If the Use SSL switch is OFF, turn it ON

Consequently, if it is ON, try turning it OFF

Touch the Authentication tab and set it to Password

Look at the number next to Server Port

For Gmail, this is usually set to 993

For Comcast and other POP email accounts, this is often set to 110

Other servers use 995 or 587 – check with your ISP if you are not sure.

For iCloud accounts, you won’t even see this listed.

Make sure that the S/MIME switch is set to OFF. This is for Secure/Multi-Purpose Internet Mail extensions used by government agencies and some high tech companies. Chances are, that if you need this to be ON you know what it is and that you need it – most of us don’t.

Once you make changes to your settings, touch the Done button and you should be all set to go. Go back to your Mail app and try to fetch your email and then try to send a new one. Hopefully, you will be fixed and working.

If you still have trouble sending or receiving email, it is possible that either the port settings or one of the other advanced settings needs to be adjusted according to the settings for your ISP.

Reader comments

How to troubleshoot email problems on the new iPad

The email is working brilliantly between my ipad2, ipad3 and iPhone4s and my yahoo plus acct. where I am having trouble is that these are not properly syncing with e apple mail client on my MacBook air.
If I delete items on the iOS devices it is not deleted from the mail on the MBA.
I thought all these devices are pulling from the yahoo server and that a delete on one of them causes a delete on the yahoo server and consequently all of them, either via yahoo, or when iCloud does a mail sync.
FYI I have iCloud mail sync and backup turned on; don't know if this is contributing to the issue though.
Any suggestions here would be appreciated... The deleted but undead mails are accumulating on my MBA unless I delete them from there separately. To be free of this confusing pain would be nice!

@robert.walter
What you are trying to accomplish requires that your email reside on the server and that email is accessed via IMAP protocol.
Difference of POP vs IMAP
POP - will allow access only to your INBOX, nothing else, so if you've created a ton of folders online forget about those. Devices connecting to your email via POP protocol will download emails and either delete emails from webmail or leave them there for x days (or indefinitely). All devices will have a set of emails (assuming email are not being delete by another device. It is a common practice to delete emails older than x days. this way all devices download a copy of them) This protocol is VERY inefficient in todays time now that people have an iPhone/Andorid/name-your-phone-that-can-access-email, iPad/Galaxy/Other-tablet, Desktop, laptop netbook, etc.
IMAP - all devices accessing email via IMAP protocol will have full access to all folders, will mark emails as read across all devices when you check that email on one device, will mark an email as replied to (forwarded) across when done on one device. Deletions from one device removes the email from the server, hence all other devices will simply not show that email. The disadvantage of this protocol is that all email MUST reside on a server so that it serves as the central source of emails.
Get a gmail account and forget about yahoo. Yahoo fails miserably syncing both ways for contacts and calendar items. Gmail on the other hand works almost flawlessly.
My set up utilizes:
1. iPhone, iCloud for cal/cont/bookmarks sync, ONE google account for notes sync to gmail, find my iPhone, 3 Gmail IMAP accounts (2 are Google Apps for business but still IMAP). I do not use notes on iCloud as I am not using an @me.com email.
2. iPad, same settings as above
3. MacBook Pro same as above
4. iMac, same settings
I use the iMac rarely but as soon as it fires up mail I have to wait a bit till it syncs with the servers for the three email accounts. But all devices are in sync.
If you are a HEAVY attachments user and want to use Google Apps for Business email for free (who doesn't) do this:
1. Register a domain name for GAB and set up an email account.
2. Register a personal gmail account
3. Forward the GAB email to the personal (either leave a copy on GAB email or not)
4. Set personal email to send as GAB email by default. Voila, now you can upgrade to 1TB of email for $256/year. Or $5 for 20gb. Those same 25GB of email would cost you $50/user/year with GAB if you need to upgrade under the GAB.
Enjoy

Hello--
I am having problems getting all of my emails on my iPad. I hardly ever delete any except for junk mail because I often need to refer back to them. Most times when I do a search on the iPad for an email I have read on my iPhone itndoesnt show up on the iPad. Is there a setting or something that will help with this?

Hi Gary,
My primary yahoo email account on iPad 2 been compromised,and I get an error MSG for wrong password.so I changed the settings and made my other yahoo email (the secondary email on my iPad) the primary one on my iPad, now I can't get any of the folders of my previous primary account (eg inbox,draft,sent). I didn't delete my previous primary account , I just made another account the primary one. Now can I retrieve it?
thank you